Lake-Sumter EMS wins awards from counties organization

July 13, 2010|By Martin E. Comas, ORLANDO SENTINEL

MOUNT DORA — Lake-Sumter Emergency Medical Services announced that it will receive achievement awards from the National Association of Counties for two programs it recently started: When to Call 911 Program and EMS Telemetry.

The awards will be presented Sunday at the association's annual conference in Washoe County, Nev. Lake County Commission Chairman Welton Cadwell, who also is the chairman of the Lake-Sumter EMS board of directors, will attend the ceremony and accept the awards.

The When to Call 911 program was started in August 2008 and is a public campaign to educate the public about how and when to call for help in an emergency, and what to do while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Officials with Lake-Sumter EMS estimate that about 10 percent of its calls are for non-emergency requests for ambulances, and the program is an effort to reduce that amount.

The EMS Telemetry Program was started in October 2008 and is designed to transmit heart monitor information to doctors before a patient arrives at a hospital.